VOTE IN DEMOCRATS, GET SQUALOR:
● New York’s economic outlook ranked worst in the nation.
● Not So Magnificent. Chicago’s safest neighborhoods start sharing in the Windy City’s crime outbreak.
● The Truth About San Francisco.
UPDATE: Austin City Council just voted to cut $150 million from its police department.
(Updated and bumped.)
MOLON LABE, MOTHERF*CKERS: Seattle BLM protesters to strangers: ‘Give up your house. Give black people back their homes.’
Also, thanks for recruiting Trump voters. Your outreach is appreciated.
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Distancing, less physical activity during pandemic cause stress, anxiety to soar.
OPEN THREAD: The phone, the tv and the news of the world, Got in the house like a pigeon from hell.
I’D LIKE TO AVOID ANY IMPERIAL ENTANGLEMENTS: Quantum communication takes a major leap with satellite-based experiment.
WELL, THE PUBLIC HEALTH COMMUNITY HAS SQUANDERED ITS PUBLIC TRUST ON THIS ONE, SO THEY WON’T HAVE MUCH TO WORK WITH NEXT TIME AROUND: Why Stephen Emmott fears the next pandemic could kill a billion people. And Covid-19 is a very mild pandemic disease by comparison with others that might occur. They’ve oversold it — understandable in the beginning when all we knew was that the Chinese were panicking, but not by now — and people will discount what they say next time. And yet it could be much, much worse next time.
Squandered trust is very destructive, yet such squandering is the hallmark of pretty much all of our institutions these days, worldwide. That says something unfortunate about the people who are running those institutions.
SPACE FORCE: Space Force foresees need for fast response launch vehicles and in-space logistics.
They’re right.
HE’S A MILLIONAIRE WHO’S IN BED WITH COMMIE DICTATORS: Lebron James, Say Her Name. It’s Agnes Chow: The NBA routinely fails to stand up for freedom, so don’t expect LeBron James to tweet about Agnes Chow’s arrest or push for ‘StandwithHK’ on NBA jerseys.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Thanks to Coronavirus and Zoom, We’re Looking at the End Stages of College as a Commodity.
And now we get to the essentializing, because the pandemic has made something undeniable: To a large extent, students have become customers. And professors should acknowledge their own role in getting us to that point, because the commodification of higher education is a direct byproduct of the transformation of college into the entrance examination for America’s middle class, something the professoriate has cheered on.
Sure, students are buying a complex bundle that’s rarely described as a “product.” But if you doubt colleges are selling, you need look only at the glossy marketing campaigns. And if you think they’re mostly selling learning, consider this thought experiment from economist Bryan Caplan: If you had to choose, would you rather have four years of Princeton University classes but no diploma, or the diploma, but no classes?
Maybe you’d choose the classes; if so, you’re in the minority. Most students are primarily buying something else — a credential, a social network — not a “community of learning.” Which is not to say that this is what they should be buying, or that we should even think of it as a “purchase.”
Markets are terrific, and we need them, but we also need institutions that are buffered from them. When those buffers break down, as they have in America’s colleges, dysfunction ensues. University business-think has meant bureaucratic overgrowth and an obsession with useless “metrics” — assessing faculty using student evaluations rather than student learning, goosing “selectivity” by soliciting applications in order to reject them.
Professors rightly resist these developments. But what else could you expect once colleges became the gatekeeper to all the good jobs? Now most everyone needs to go, regardless of their interest in learning. And an essentially scholarly enterprise doesn’t serve most of those people well.
So instead, U.S. higher education bundled “teaching and research” with a bunch of other things — residential amenities, sports teams, networking opportunities, career coaching, dating service and so forth. Among other effects, all this initially created a booming demand for professors; their numbers quintupled from 1940 to 1970 and then almost doubled again by 1988. Without that shift, most of the professors complaining about the commercialization of education would have had to take jobs in actual businesses.
You don’t want that. I’ve worked in the private sector. They expect results. Well, unless you’re a diversity officer or something.
Plus: “The bundle was still tightly woven enough, however, that we could tell ourselves the learning was still the heart of the package. Then covid-19 came, and suddenly, the lectures and the homework were the only part schools could still deliver. Yet somehow, few students seem reassured that they’re getting most of what they were paying tuition for. Deep down, even university presidents knew this would be the case, which is why so many spent the summer pretending they were going to find some way to reopen, in many cases announcing the truth only when the tuition checks were well in hand.”
Super-cynical, and entirely correct.
NO. NEXT QUESTION? Is Kamala Harris Really a ‘Pragmatic Moderate?’
ROGER SIMON: Trump Again Proves He Cares More for Israel Than Most American Jews.
Worst. Hitler. Ever.
AND AGAIN: “Human Events managing editor and The Post Millennial contributing editor Ian Miles Cheong was suspended by Twitter Thursday evening for a tweet that supported law enforcement using force to handle rioters in Portland, Ore.”
THEY BACKED DOWN AFTER THIS CAME OUT, BUT THEY SHOULD BE OFFERING REFUNDS: Minneapolis Tells Residents With Riot-Wrecked Buildings They Can’t Clean Up Until They’ve Paid Their 2020 Property Taxes in Full. “After failing at the one thing people think they need from government, Minneapolis is getting tough on making damaged citizens pay up.”
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Biden: ‘A Black Woman Will Become President Over My Dead Body.’
Kamala Harris: I accept your terms!
WHEN YOU CAN’T TRUST THE NUMBERS: N.C. ‘Reporting Error’ Fuels 200,000 COVID Testing Overcount.
MICHIGAN METAPHOR ALERT: Bald eagle attacks $950 state drone, drops it into Lake Michigan. Gretchen Whitmer better hope it’s not some sort of omen.
UM, NO. Federal Judge Proposes Letting ACLU Determine Who is a Journalist. “Obama appointed judge was a partner in the law firm of Perkins Coie.”
